The increasing usage of health foods including natural grains and the popularity of the wheat grinding mill have given rise to the need for a simple and economical cleaner for small batches of wheat, barley and other small grains in the home. Such a device to be practical and to satisfy the needs of the art must be lightweight, easy to clean, requiring little or no maintenance, and must consume little energy to operate. It should be attractive in appearance and fit neatly with other canisters and the like on the housewife's kitchen counter. No known prior art device meets the needs for a household grain cleaner and the objective of the invention is to completely satisfy the need by providing a grain cleaner which is convenient to use and achieves a thorough cleaning of grains with minimum consumption of energy in a unique continuous vacuum cleaning process which utilizes the household vacuum cleaner as a source of vacuum.
The prior art contains numerous teachings pertaining to vacuum cleaning systems for grains or other granular solids but such systems and devices are constructed and used on a large commercial scale, are far too costly and complex for household use, and generally are impractical for the specific needs herein.
To comply with the duty to disclose known prior art under 37 C.F.R. 1.56, the following United States patents are made of record herein:
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,659,659; 2,173,088; 1,850,719; 2,931,500; 2,115,107; 3,398,423.